500 words a day on whatever I want

Timbuktu

Timbuktu (1100- ), more commonly spelled Timbuctoo before 1956, is a West African city in Mali. It stands at the edge of the Sahara, near the bend of the Niger River. In 1500 it was larger than London at the time, with a university more famous than Oxford. It was the largest city of the Songhay Empire. It was a city of scholars and 333 saints.

It stood where camel met canoe, where the caravan routes across the Sahara met the trade along the Niger River. From the south and south-west came gold, slaves and ivory, from the east came copper and from the north came salt, horses and cloth. It all met at Timbuktu. And, in time, so did books and scholars, giving rise to Sankore University.

Sankore mosque

In the 1350s when Ibn Battuta visited, he did not think much of it. In the 1980s, Bob Geldof said, “Is that it?” But in the 1510s, when Leo Africanus arrived, Timbuktu was near the height of its glory. It was his writings that made it a fabled city of gold in the minds of Westerners for the next 300 years.

So fabled that when Robert Adams, a Black American, told of his visit there in 1811, he was not believed. Nor was Rene Caillie of Francecompletely believed in 1828 when he reported finding only “a mass of ill-looking houses” and “the most profound silence.” Only after the British sent Heinrich Barth in the 1850s did the truth sink in.

Bella children play at the edge of town. They are descendants of slaves.

Timbuktu had become a backwaters. By the 1600s Western ships could deliver goods faster and cheaper than camels. Timbuktu’s trade dried up.

You can still tell it was once a great city: even in 2010, it had 700,000 manuscripts, mostly from the 1300s to the 1500s

A few of the books of Timbuktu, 2009.

In about 1100, Tuaregs founded Timbuktu. It was at the end of one of their caravan routes across the Sahara.

By the 1300s it became one of the main cities of the Mali Empire. In 1468, the Songhay Empire took over. It soon became its biggest city, with 200,000 people. The 1500s were the city’s glory days.

In 1591, Morocco took over, using a new weapon supplied by the Queen of England: the arquebus – the gun. Some of Morocco’s soldiers were Spanish, Scottish and Irish. The soldiers settled down and married Songhay women, creating a new ethnic group, the Arma, named for their guns. They live there still.

By 1600, Morocco, having carried off most of Timbuktu’s wealth and top people, lost interest. That left the Arma to pretty much run things.

In the 1800s came the Fulani jihad. Timbuktu was ruled in turn by the Fulani, the Tuaregs and then, in 1893, the French. In 1960, it became part of Mali, a French neocolonial state.

In 2012, Tuaregs took over the city. Some were jihadists who destroyed the tombs of Sufi saints and burned what books they could find (thankfully, only about 3% of them). In 2013, Malian and French soldiers took back the city.

@ Michael Cooper – Even older is the area surrounding Adam’s Calendar in Southern Africa. Some are so perplexed by it that they dismiss it as being built by Nephilim/Annunaki from Planet X /Nibiru rather than think that there was a Sub-Saharan people which had a culture that was more than the more commonly accepted image of savages.

@ gro jo….Your assumption that Plato is the only intellectuals to be quoted from Malian history is very Eurocentric. You have to remember that Plato wrote about and traveled to Egypt, and Egypt is African.
I am sure there was African intellectuals worthy of contribution to the history of philosophy and thought. Always question dogma, and origins of etymology, especially words like philosophy. Cheers.

Ahmed Baba was the most prominent representative of the elite scholars in Timbuktu.

This is the position of this great philosopher in the face of racism, when he replied unambiguously to interlocutors who implied that enslavement of Black people was the natural consequence of some cosmic curse against the ‘descendants of Ham’:

“There is no difference between one race or another,”

he wrote in his Mi’raj al-su’ud, dismissing unequivocally any idea of a ‘natural’ character of slavery.

mpeasee, I wish people would drop that Eurocentric stuff. 14th century Mali depended on Arab culture. Quite a few of the books are likely to be Greek knowledge passed on to the Arabs.

“It is recorded that Mansa Musa traveled through the cities of Timbuktu and Gao on his way to Mecca, and made them a part of his empire when he returned around 1325. He brought architects from Andalusia, a region in Spain, and Cairo to build his grand palace in Timbuktu and the great Djinguereber Mosque that still stands today.”

You are not dealing here with some pristine African civilization that arose without any influence from outside Africa. The very name Africa is Eurocentric, since that’s what Europeans called the continent.

Ahmed Baba insisted on the value of knowledge with the precision that knowledge is authentic and complete only when it is a way of life, when beyond the mastery of science there is scrupulous attention to what a good life means, when the accomplished faqih (jurist) is also the fully realised ‘arif (sage):

“One hour of a scholar laying on his bed but meditating on his knowledge is more valuable than the worship of a devout person during seventy years.”

Dodging questions as usual. And short memory. “Pristine African civilization” is some typical B.S. term you just came up with in true Eurocentric fashion, so it only make sense that you’ll define it and “pristine” European and Asian civilisations and give examples. Or are you retracting already?

And I don’t recall disputing the etymology of the word “Africa” although it is debatable.

Among the Dutch “Timboektoe” is almost universally known as a city very far away, but mostly from Donald Duck comics, so the reaction “TIMBUKTU is real???” is not uncommon among the people who did not pay attention to the geography of Africa in school. Partly in honor of its early literacy and richness there is a reading education method (senior half of Elementary school), with that name, as well as a series of youth novels (though that is more based on the far away idea), about a camping in France (the movie of the books exists) and back in the days of videotapes a publisher of adaptations of books for the youngest ones used that name, there was back in 2010 even a TV-show with that name… As well as the mystery, scholarship and history of Timbuktu, the popularity of the name could be helped by containing, at least in the Dutch spelling, the word “boek” (book),…

resw77, I love your aggressiveness and sense of ownership when it comes to Africa, one would be forgiven to think that African civilization was your personal creation. Unfortunately, you are just a deluded boor. When you have evidence that Mali was not influenced by the Maghreb come back and enlighten me and the rest on this blog. I’m going to spend my time more productively by reading the books that I spent a great deal of money on. I hope you won’t be too offended, if you are, c’est la vie. Goodbye, hope to “hear” from you soon.

Highly unlikely that they quoted Plato. Every culture in the world has been influenced by other cultures. European cave dwellers were influenced by immigrants from the middle east to adopt farming then writing. Egyptian culture was influenced by Africans within the continent and other cultures from the middle East. You were probably influenced by another person to take the career you have right now. The culture in Mali is rich; their tradition is rich and distinct. That is why people say they want to listen to Malian music, appreciate their oral tradition and indulge in their culture. I want to get to know their philosophies, oral traditions, stories and culture-Arabs are pretty boring by the way.

And who are the Arabs anyway? They are people with African, European and Asian DNA who adopted a religion called Islam. Islam was influenced by Judaism and Christianity, which were allegedly influenced by Egyptian religions and beliefs.

I love how you make definitive and idiotic Eurocentric claims but can’t ever back them up. When asked simple questions about the statements you just made, you get defensive and deflect, as you’ve just demonstrated…twice.

“Even older is the area surrounding Adam’s Calendar in Southern Africa. Some are so perplexed by it that they dismiss it as being built by Nephilim/Annunaki from Planet X /Nibiru rather than think that there was a Sub-Saharan people which had a culture that was more than the more commonly accepted image of savages.”

A word of advice. gro jo can not be talked to civilly or reasoned with. When any of his viewpoints are questioned or disproven, he deflects and becomes defensive rather than confronting the contradictions in his views. Something he does a lot is move goalposts, so watch for that.

resw77, as the guardian of all things African you should know all about the techniques pioneered by Africans that allowed them to feed themselves in very diverse environments. A person with your encyclopedic knowledge should welcome the opportunity to educate the rest of us. How did they grow rice in mangroves? For how many thousands of years have they cultivated rice in SeneGambia? How did they get rid of salt water to grow rice? How about the tools they invented? Unless you can answer my questions. It took whites a century to acknowledge their achievement.

Timbuktu is not all that far away from Europe. But in the early 1800s, because of malaria and jihadist governments, very few White Christians reached it and made it back alive. By the 1850s in English it had become a byword for a faraway place.

There is no such thing as a pristine culture, certainly not one that takes part in international trade. The Ancient Greeks, like Plato himself, got much of their culture from Africa and Asia. There are no “pristine” European cultures, except maybe in Lappland, if that.

Malaria saved Africa south of the Sahara from many invasions. I believe it is one of the reasons the Romans could not take Nubia and move further south. They would have driven all of the wildlife to extinction.

Whilst contemplating and trying to understand the rich philosophic and written heritage of Timbuktu scholars, I am struck by the salient point made by Dr Molefe Kete Asanti. He points out the erroneous and misleading language when one says African slaves were forced to cross the Atlantic and enslaved as chattel in the Americas.

No. No African slave was removed from Africa. African philosophers, artists, blacksmiths, poets, priests, mystics, farmers, librarians, fishermen, musicians, scribes, scholars, soldiers, traders, architects, book binders, builders and and and were forced from Africa and into the Middle Passage.

I don’t want to spark a War, but Asante is a joke. Not only has he attacked other black American academics for being leftist, he also accused them of promoting an ‘anti-African worldview’ because they were socialists and leftists (Monteiro, Cornell West). It being black and socialist is anti-African, then. Asante can’t think too highly of many Pan-Africanists!

Listen, Tablinseh, trot out your un-tumbleresque pseudo-history to mirkwood. I am not interested in a jot of your Eurocentric PoV. On this blog, I am not interested in engaging with you. As an African , I will not defend or justify or debate any writings, philosophy, history of any African scholar with you for the sake of you parading your western erudition.

@Abagond: “There is no such thing as a pristine culture, certainly not one that takes part in international trade. The Ancient Greeks, like Plato himself, got much of their culture from Africa and Asia. There are no “pristine” European cultures, except maybe in Lappland, if that.”

+1

Gro jo, are you listening? Or are you still in retract and detract mode?

That’s the same talibmensah who told me I should trust Mary Lefkowitz, someone with absolutely no expertise on African history, on African history.

See how, instead of critiquing Asante’s academic work, he attacked Asante personally and then threw in a “Asante’ writings on African history are flawed in many ways, too,” as if that’s enough to discredit him.

Yes, at every turn western historians and academics were vaunted by this know-it -all about Africa, dismissing African heavy-weight academics like Dr Cheik Anta Diop and now Dr Molefe Asante. Gleaning from the “Africa in the 1400’s” thread not one African source was worthy of consideration on the history of Africa. Go figure, as Americans would say.

What people should know is that most archaeological expeditions in Africa have been done in Egypt. They only started excavating and studying Nubia a few years ago. Recently, scientists were shocked that most Africans have European DNA that made its way into Africa from the Middle East.

Listen, Tablinseh, trot out your un-tumbleresque pseudo-history to mirkwood. I am not interested in a jot of your Eurocentric PoV. On this blog, I am not interested in engaging with you. As an African , I will not defend or justify or debate any writings, philosophy, history of any African scholar with you for the sake of you parading your western erudition.

Bravo!

That’s the same talibmensah who told me I should trust Mary Lefkowitz, someone with absolutely no expertise on African history, on African history.

resw77, I hate to burst your bubble but Abagond’s comments are nothing more than echos of what I wrote:
“on Mon 26 Oct 2015 at 16:27:33
gro jo…You are not dealing here with some pristine African civilization that arose without any influence from outside Africa. The very name Africa is Eurocentric, since that’s what Europeans called the continent.”
” on Tue 27 Oct 2015 at 05:15:51
abagond

There is no such thing as a pristine culture, certainly not one that takes part in international trade. The Ancient Greeks, like Plato himself, got much of their culture from Africa and Asia. There are no “pristine” European cultures, except maybe in Lappland, if that.”
” on Mon 26 Oct 2015 at 15:22:05
gro jo…The Malians were probably quoting Plato in their books.”
” on Tue 27 Oct 2015 at 04:38:24
abagond

There were copies of Plato in the libraries of Timbuktu.”
resw77, please use your ‘gigantic’ intellect to show me the difference between what I wrote and you found objectionable, and what Abagond wrote that you praised? After you’re done with this little detail, I hope you’ll give us the lecture on African rice I asked you for.

Your statement that Timbuktu was not some “pristine African civilization,” obviously implied your belief in the existence of “pristine African civilization.” And of course you had no spine to explain what you meant.

On the contrary, Abagond said “THERE IS NO SUCH THING” as your term.

Get the difference now?

As to Plato, you must be confusing me with another commenter since I said nothing to you about Plato.

And If you want to talk about rice or something else to detract from this topic, ask Abagond to write a post on it.

resw77 wrote: “…Your statement that Timbuktu was not some “pristine African civilization,” obviously implied your belief in the existence of “pristine African civilization. ”…On the contrary, Abagond said “THERE IS NO SUCH THING” as your term.”

You’re so cute when you misquote people. It would have been pretty dumb of Abagond to claim that no pristine civilization exists. He offered Lapland as a possible candidate. I would throw in The Blacks of Andaman Islands off the coast of India and several tribes deep in the heart of the Amazon.Now let’s hear you lecture on Oryza glaberrima? You don’t know a thing about it? That’s ok, that’s why I’m here, to enlighten you and mock your ignorance.

“Black Rice tells the history of the true provenance of rice in the Americas. It establishes, through agricultural and historical evidence, the independent domestication of rice in West Africa and its …

Res, I like how you don’t respond to the article I shared. I’m not trying to make it personal, but bringing in Asante’s political biases is important for illustrating how he defines ‘African’ in ways that are preposterous. His methodology and ‘research’ is also problematic. Read the article instead of making assumptions.

Take that up with Abagond, who said, as I quoted him verbatim, “There is NO SUCH THING AS a pristine culture, certainly not one that takes part in international trade.” And as to Lappland “IF THAT.” Although I see you’re hard of reading today.

And no I never said I agreed with his statement, rather pointed out the fact that it contradicted your implication based on your idiotic Eurocentric statement about some “pristine African civilization.”

I know you’re offended because your Eurocentric BS was called out for what it was by me and several others, but again, no one here is discussing rice or any other topic to which you wish to deflect, gro joker.

resw77, I’ve been looking for information on the life of Bava Gor , the African Sufi saint Who is credited with starting agate mining in India and Pakistan. As knowledgeable as you are on all things African, I was hoping you could recommend where I could find more information on him.

I didn’t respond to you because I have nothing to say about the article.

What does your personal beef with Asante have to do with Timbuktu? Since it doesn’t appear to be relevant, I’ll continue to consider it the deflection that it is and treat it with the contempt it deserves.

“Read the article instead of making assumptions.”—He didn’t make assumptions about the article because he did not read it. He made a few choice statements about you.

In essence I think every methodology has its flaws, but makes one method more valued or acceptable than another. Just because a method is not universally accepted does not make it completely wrong or invalid. Some say ghost do not exist and use science to conclude as such. Doesn’t make it true or a reliable conclusion.

Gro Joker, I like the sound of that, may I use it for my moniker? Resw77, you are so cute when you do your weasel impersonation. After I showed that you misquoted Abagond and gave two examples of “pristine cultures”, you ruthlessly threw Abagond under the bus.”Take that up with Abagond,…And no I never said I agreed with his statement,…” I guess you were too modest to state your own views on the subject, no surprise there, that’s your stock-in-trade. You are an empty drum making a great deal of noise. You’re a two tricks pony, consisting of sneering at the contribution of others and calling anything you dislike or don’t understand “Eurocentric”. That word is a synonym for your ignorance.
I grew up speaking European languages, believing in a European god, studying European history, I suspect you did the same, to that extent, we are both Eurocentric. If, as I suspect, You mean that I’m an apologist for white supremacy, you need to prove it. Start by listing stuff I wrote that you consider Eurocentric and explain why it is so.

Timbuktu has been the more common spelling in English since 1956. It is also the preferred spelling of both the Wikipedia and the Oxford dictionary, which I generally follow unless there is a good, solid reason not to.

Whatever, Res. I knew it was a little off topic, but someone brought him up before. Talking with you never comes close to real debate or communication anyway. I agree with Gro Jo on this thread. I guess we’re ‘self-hating Eurocentrists’ to you!

I quoted abagond verbatim. So your problem with what he said has nothing to do with me.

“I suspect you did the same, to that extent, we are both Eurocentric”

And your suspicions are wrong.

“If, as I suspect, You mean that I’m an apologist for white supremacy, you need to prove it.Start by listing stuff I wrote that you consider Eurocentric and explain why it is so”

Several people have called out your idiotic Eurocentric statements on this thread and elsewhere, and so just read what you wrote.

This post is about Timbuktu, not gro joker, even though anyone with common sense can see that you and talibmensah are here only to derail it and others like it, e.g., Ancient Mali and Africa in the 1400s, with Eurocentric claims that you can never seem to substantiate.

@talibmensah

“Whatever, Res. I knew it was a little off topic, but someone brought him up before.”

No one brought him up before you. An irrelevant topic from an irrelevant liar.

“Several people have called out your idiotic Eurocentric statements on this thread and elsewhere, and so just read what you wrote.”

You mean when I wrote that the Malians were familiar with Plato and quoted his works? You and your posse got on my case for that only to have Abagond confirm that they were indeed familiar with Plato.

“This post is about Timbuktu, not gro joker, even though anyone with common sense can see that you and talibmensah are here only to derail it and others like it, e.g., Ancient Mali and Africa in the 1400s, with Eurocentric claims that you can never seem to substantiate.”

Totally agree. European writing systems all originally came from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Christianity and Judaism hugely shaped European history and also have heavy influences from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Egypt and Mesopotamia are respectively African and Middle Eastern. Ironically, Africans and Middle Easterners are the most hated racial groups among Europeans today despite so much of their own culture being shaped by these groups.

Also, saying that Timbuktu was influenced by Arabs isn’t saying much since their written language is derived from Egyptian writing and Islam is influenced by Egypt. The question comes down to how African Egypt should be considered. My thinking is that if Egypt is not African, then Greece and Rome are certainly not European.

Would be great to have someone like yourself teach in community based schools. Great article. We had an amazing history and will have an even more future. Just need to work with our own as we did in the past.

I would not waste my breath on gro jo or talibmensah. They do not have a particle of interest in Timbuktu or even their own Eurocentrism. They just want to troll.”

Now I see why people on this blog write so much nonsense, they are inspired by you. You’re a pretty shallow guy who writes nonsense from time to time. One of my favorite examples was your post on some con artist claiming a piece of land between Egypt and Sudan. That article revealed your ignorance of basic facts of international relations. How about your equally idiotic parroting of the claims of so-called “experts” on the death toll of the Chinese famine from 1959-1961 in your post on Mao? If you and your “experts” are to be believed, China lost between 21 to 43% of the population of Japan for 1960 (92,500,000)
and managed to bounce right back and even became overpopulated a mere decade later in 1970! I see you picked up the equally idiotic Eurocentrist mantra. Let me guess, not taking stuff people write on this blog at face value is Eurocentric, right? Pointing out to somebody that Mali wasn’t isolated from the Maghreb or Europe is Eurocentric. Pointing out the innovations of the rice farmers of Senegambia to the ignorant resw77 is equally Eurocentric! This blog gives you the chance to play at being Pope. Your claims should be received and accepted ex cathedra. This kind of stupidity is more than I can endure. I’ll no longer comment here. I’ll go back to lurking from time to time and laugh at some of the nonsense passing for serious debate here.

Okay, if I am considered a troll, this will be my last comment. I do hope you someday correct false information on some of your posts I pointed out, such as your misleading posts on Haiti which reveal poor research on your part. The least you could do is correct those posts so as to avoid perpetuating ignorance. Bye!

Good riddance! Maybe now we can discuss Timbuktu without you derailing things to talk about your disdain for black scholars and love for white scholars, including those with absolutely no expertise in African history.

@Lord of Mirkwood

No one cares about your blog for the umpteenth time. And of course he doesn’t derail your threads. You don’t care about African historical topics and your blog posts aren’t written about them.

Come on folks! Give them a break! Don’t you enjoy comedy relief? Lets get back to the topic at hand.”

LOL, the silence is deafening, where are all the “brilliant” contributions from the claque that tarred me with the troll label? Not even a word on how the Jali or Griot system was organized? Could our “Afrocentrists” be ignorant of the importance of such system in the life of Mali and Timbuktu? Nah, they are just extremely “modest”.